An app hardening use case: Filling the PCI prescription for preventing privilege escalation in mobile apps

Regulators, standards bodies and IT auditors have become increasingly likely to recommend an absolute prohibition of rooted Android devices in production environments. As the 2017 PCI Mobile Payment Acceptance Security Guidelines state, “Bypassing permissions can allow untrusted security decisions to be made, thus increasing the number of possible attack vectors.”

It is only natural that the apps themselves rise up to act as a ubiquitous governance, risk, and compliance management layer – preventing, detecting, responding, and reporting on threats - including those posed by unauthorized rooted devices.

The PCI Mobile Payment Security Guidelines recommend the following (4) controls be in place:

Section 4.3 Prevent Escalation of Privileges

“Controls should exist to prevent the escalation of privileges on the device (e.g., root or group privileges). … (1) the device should be monitored for activities that defeat operating system security controls (e.g., jailbreaking or rooting) and, when detected, (2) the device should be quarantined by a solution that removes it from the network, removes the payment-acceptance application from the device, or (3) disables the payment application.

(4) Offline jailbreak and root detection are key since some attackers may attempt to put the device in an offline state to further circumvent detection.”

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About Me

Grew-up in Westbeth, the world's largest artist community. (www.westbeth.org) I rebelled and went into the world of commercial software where I have been for over 30 years. I am currently EVP & Chief Strategy Officer at PreEmptive Solutions. (www.preemptive.com)